In this case specifically with pensions, which rely on high interest rates to make their Ponzi scheme accounting work. Even MSNBC can understand the problem:

Thanks to stock market gyrations and the lowest interest rates in 60 years, millions of Americans are struggling to keep their retirement savings intact and secure their future.

And it’s not any easier for managers of their pension funds.

Both groups share a mounting problem. The plunge in interest rates engineered to save the U.S. economy and banking system has left them with a giant money hole to fill. Much like a retiree trying to live off the income from Treasury bonds, when interest rates fall, you need a lot more bonds to generate the same level of income.

The same principle has left the nation’s public and private pension funds badly underfunded.

“We are actually more underfunded than we were at the end of 2008 because of the drop in interest rates since then,” said John Ehrhardt, who tracks fund performance for benefits consultant Milliman.

That’s a sharp reversal from just a few years ago, when pension funds managed by the nation’s largest corporations were fully funded, holding roughly $1 in assets for every $1 of future obligations to pay benefits.

When the financial markets tanked in 2008, stock market losses wiped out trillions of dollars in assets of both individual retirement accounts and pension funds. The market’s rebound since then has helped make up some of those lost assets. But lower interest rates have made it more costly to meet future liabilities. In just the last year alone, the ratio of assets to liabilities of the 100 largest private pension funds has fallen from 82 cents on the dollar to just 73 cents.

So companies are scrambling to find ways to fill the funding gap.

“It’s unlikely for most funds that investment return alone is going to do the trick,” said Alan Glickstein, a benefits consultant at Towers Watson.

That means setting aside additional contributions from corporate profits. Ehrhardt says those contributions are at the highest levels in 10 years – close to $50 billion last year – and could hit $75 billion for 2010.

In other words, without absurdly high interest rates generous pension benefits are unsustainable. Even MSNBC can graps that, but the Fed can’t?

Or they can and they know that Obama will loot the tax revenue to pay off pensions as long as he’s in office, partly as payola to the left leaning unions but mostly as a vanity play as Obama attempts to leave behind a legacy of being FDR Jr. The low interest rates keeps banks rolling and punishes savers, who Keynesian see as the real problem with the economy. With inflation outpacing savings rates, people will soon be unable to afford to sit on their money.

But then at least union workers will get theirs.